Price.] 32(3 [January. 



But following from habit and example in the steps of our prede- 

 cessors, we take too little thought of the capacities of improvement 

 in ourselves and families. And though there seems to be little scope 

 for an increase of learning in morals and religion, there is always 

 great room for practical improvement. P^aeh individual may cease- 

 lessly increase his knowledge and improve his social manners and 

 affections; and multiply the applications of known truths; and in 

 every step of this progress other truths will dawn upon the mind 

 with ceaseless increase of light and of the joy of life. Let not 

 then the familiarity of the subject make us forgetful of the duty of 

 observation, reflection, and advancement, in this small, ever present, 

 and always interesting centre, but of ceaselessly expanding influence 

 and power, the family. 



In dwelling upon this familiar subject I have been led to consider 

 how prone are mankind to overlook the significance of things most 

 commonly present to them ; and though the subject in hand may not 

 admit of scientific discovery, yet the moral consequences to result 

 from a better understanding of it, may so far surpass in practical 

 benefits the most brilliant discoveries in physical science, as to make 

 our labors in this field of practically the greatest importance to man- 

 kind. Physical discoveries are always most valuable ; and if seemingly 

 for nothing else, are so in the discovery of the Creative wisdom; but 

 in practical purpose rise in importance as they minister to human 

 welfare. Let us illustrate by a few instances how blind mankind 

 have been to things the most familiar to them ; as to which philoso- 

 phers, some of them our predecessors in this Society, have made 

 discoveries which have conferred glory upon their names and upon 

 philosophy. All men, through all the lapse of time since men peo- 

 pled the earth, had beheld the light with adnuration, praise, and 

 even worship ; but thought it a simple element, until Xewton ana- 

 Ij'zed its rays into the prismatic colors, although they had seen their 

 prismatic separations as refracted by the atmosphere, before the rising 

 and after the setting of the sun of every unclouded day, through all 

 the ages of human existence. Men had always breathed this atmo- 

 sphere, upon which we hang at every moment for its life-giving in- 

 spiration, and in all time they had supposed it to be another simple 

 element, until our Dr. Priestley, in but the past generation, separated 

 its simpler elements, and found one of its gases to be that which 

 sustains alike combustion and life; the other to dilute that burning 

 oxygen that else would destroy all life. The water, which all men 

 drank as another necessity of life, they supposed to be another ele- 



